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REMARKS 

7 
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DR. CHANNING'S SLAVERY, 



BY A CITIZEN OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



SECOND EDITION. 



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BOSTON ■'~^:^z^ 

RUSSELL, SHATTUCK AND CO., AND JOHN H. E.-VSTBURN, 

1835. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1835, by John H. 
Eastburn, ill tlie Clerk'a Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 



SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER I. 

Introduction. The Case stated. 

The Reverend Dr. Channing has recently been designated 
in the London Quarterly Review as one of the only " two 
living classics" in the United States; and our own North 
American, in anticipation or in echo of its European contem- 
porary, has repeated the same title of respect. 

This is but the exaggerated expression of that proud rank 
which he unquestionably holds in the opinion of the literary 
world. A philosopher, a scholar, a casuist, — at the head of 
the Unitarian clergy, and connected by numberless associa- 
tions with the literature, the opinions, and the character of his 
countrymen, — he can write nothing that will not carry with 
it a portion of his own personal fame ; he can maintain no 
doctrine that will not derive force from the authority of his 
reputation ; he can advance no opinion on the controverted 
questions of the day, which will not be received, at home and 
abroad, as the general sentiment of the community, — or if 
at first it should be taken for one of those novelties that some- 
times startle us by their boldness, it is yet known to fall in the 
teeming soil of popular admiration, in which it germinates 
with exuberant fecundity. 

The book which he has recently published, on the exciting 
subject of Slavery, is the popular wonder of the day. Writ- 
ten with a fervor which bears the evidence of sincerity, with 
a glow of benevolence that captivates the affections, and a 
spirit of piety as earnest — though it may be as mistaken — 
as the zeal of the crusaders, it is still made more captivating 
by " the elegance, correctness, purity, power, and point, in 



the use of language,"* which are the characteristics of his ani- 
mated style. With these means of a powerful influence, it 
is sent forth to operate on one of the most momentous con- 
cerns which can ever agitate a Christian and a republican 
people. 

From any praise which may be bestowed on this book as a 
work of art, I have no disposition to detract. Materiam su- 
perabit opus. With no desire, certainly, to place anything of 
mine in contrast with the polished periods of the American 
Addison, I trust it may not be deemed presumptuous, in this 
day of free discussion and liberal inquiry, fearlessly to exam- 
ine the scope and tendency of his production, and submit my 
own reflections to an intelligent and candid community. 

I feel the more at liberty to do this, because the professed 
intention of the Reverend Gentleman is to teach me and other 
of my fellow-citizens our duty in relation to a subject of great 
practical and national importance, on which we have a duty to 
perform that we cannot evade, and to enforce his teachings by 
the authority of moral law and Christian precept, to whose 
supremacy we implicitly submit. Holding as high as he does 
the sanctions to which he appeals, but totally dissenting from 
his application of them, I am not willing that a departure from 
his directions and a denial of his precepts, should be deemed 
a breach of Christian duty or of moral obligation. I will not 
quarrel with the cathedral spirit in which his commands are 
conveyed, although it may seem a little too professional, be- 
cause I may myself need an apology for a professional manner 
which it is very difficult to shake off. It will not, however, 
escape observation that an accusation of grievous sins and the 
assumption of superior sanctity are apt to be deemed depart- 
ures from that temper of humility, which, as much as any- 
thing, is the doctrine of Christian philosophy. 

I present the following propositions, to which I shall ask 
the attention of the reader. 

First. Public sentiment in the free States, in relation to 
Slavery, is perfectly sound, and ought not to be altered. 

* North American Review for October, 1835. 



5 

Second. Public sentiment in the Slave-holding States, 
whether right or not, cannot be altered. 

Third. An attempt to produce any alteration in the public 
sentiment of the country, will cause great additional evil — 
moral, social, and political. 

To these several positions I invite the attention of the 
reader. 

The doctrine of the Northern States is : 

1. That Domestic Slavery is a deep and dreadful evil. 

2. That its continuance or removal is solely within the 
power of the domestic legislation of the State in which it 
exists. 

3. That it is a breach of our highest political contract, 
and a violation of good faith and common honesty, to disturb 
the internal condition and domestic arrangements of the Slave- 
holding States. 

The first of these positions has been so long acknowledged 
and so recently repeated, that it needs no additional enforce- 
ment, and he who attempts to stir up the public mind to a 
stronger feeling or a deeper glow of indignation, does in effect 
join that little band of fanatics whose imprudent agitation has 
deranged the peace of the community. 

Whatever may be the disclaimer of our author, his book 
does this, and in the sensitive region of slavery will he keenly 
felt to have done this ; and all the troubles caused by in- 
ferior agents in this work of commotion, will be reproduced 
and augmented under the influence of his authority. 

What possible benefit is to be gained by repeating, in every 
inflection of taste and style, and with all the gorgeousness of 
rhetoric, long established truisms which nobody denies ? Why 
are we told that, by the moral law, there can be no property 
in a human being, when for more than half a century, the soil 
of New-England has not been pressed by the foot of a domes- 
tic slave ? Why are we told that man, every man, however 
obscure his condition, is a rational, moral, immortal being, 
when the doctrine, famihar from childhood, is the daily and 
constant sentiment of our Christian community ? Why are 
we told in detail of the vast evils of Slavery ? of the moral 



and social and personal degradation that it brings with it ? of 
the sin and misery and wretchedness in which, with retribu- 
tive justice, it involves all classes of the community in which 
it is found ? This, and more than this, is the common feel- 
ing of our New England population. Addressed to us, this 
glowing and exciting language is useless for conviction, and 
powerful only for excitement to useless anger or unjustifiable 
action. 

Addressed to the South, it is but a reiteration of the 
deep and powerful feeling which, to a very great extent, pre- 
vails among its best informed and well principled people. 
But to them it comes with all the bitter insult of intentional 
mockery. 

Suppose Slavery to be the dreadful evil which is rep- 
resented. Suppose the impassioned eloquence of a virtuous 
indignation gathers the whole world in one simultaneous out- 
cry of reprobation and disgust. There it is. There it re- 
mains. There, in spite of all this outcry, still rests and will 
rest, this entailed curse of their country. 

Suppose the pretended masters of more than two miUions 
of human beings, warned by Dr. Channing's denunciations, as 
by another earthquake, awake out of their deep sleep of sin, 
and come running to this modern Paul, with the heart-breaking 
exclamation — Sir, sir, what shall ive do to be saved 9 Has 
our apostle of freedom one word of consolation or instruction 
to give them ? Has he devised the way of their escape from 
the moral guilt in which he tells them they are plunged ? 
Does he propose any remedy for this leprosy of their souls ? 
Is there any pool of Siloam in which, by his direction, they 
may wash and be clean ? 

None is known — nothing is proposed. No human secur- 
ity has been or can be suggested, that has the slightest prac- 
tical efficiency. The Catholic priest, when he brings his 
penitent to the confessional, has some relief for his con- 
science ; but here all is desolation and despair. 

A practical philosopher would not think this mode of dis- 
cussion calculated to awaken the conscience. Its tendency is 



to rouse the passions and arm the supposed criminal for de- 
fence. 

If there is no known remedy, why taunt a man with his 
condition ? His condition may be a misfortune ; but it ceases 
to be his crime. Evils enough there are, inseparable from 
domestic Slavery, without adding to them the irritation 
and anger of a whole people. Present pain, apprehension of 
future danger, uncertain, indefinite, but on that account more 
alarming, press everywhere on the free population of a slave 
country. They live, and they know they live on the crater 
of a volcano, which every moment may pour forth its con- 
cealed but certain fires, in a torrent of indiscriminate destruc- 
tion. 

The duty of Christianity, it seems to me, is not to excite strong 
abhorrence in one portion of the community, which may lead 
them to break the bounds of moderation and prudence, nor to 
excite in another angry and hateful feelings, and stir up their 
resentment and revenge. Sympathy is due to the white man 
as well as the slave. Affectionate and generous assurance of 
regard, kindness, protection, are due to the white woman of 
education and virtue, to the feebleness of infancy and the 
helplessness of age, to the mothers, sisters, wives and daugh- 
ters of our own race, as well as to the tawny-colored children 
of bondage. 

I object to the severe and indiscriminate national reflec- 
tions, which this teacher of morals deems himself at liberty to 
throw on our slave-holding countrymen. True or false, they 
are alike objectionable. 

" Malicious slander," says an approved writer, " is the re- 
lating of truth or falsehood, for the purpose of creating mis- 
ery." Such purpose would undoubtedly be denied by our 
author ; but if misery is not the consequence, it will not be 
for want of poison in the shaft, but vigor in the bow. 

If domestic Slavery, as the book avers, nourishes in the mas- 
ter of slaves the passion for power and its kindred vices, anni- 
hilates the control of Christianity, and is necessarily fatal to the 
purity of a people, — if a slave country reeks with licentious- 



8 

ness and crime — if it is tainted with a deadlier pestilence 
than the plague — it is unfortunate for our own moral habits 
that the facts were not known to our fathers, before they 
bound our virtuous New England in a bond of amity and fel- 
lowship to all this iniquity and wretchedness. But it may be 
inquired with anxiety when this discovery was made, and why 
are 

All their faults observed, 
Set in a note book, conn'd by rote 
To cast into their teeth — 

Are we to continue united to all this moral putrefaction not- 
withstanding its ofFensiveness, or shall we cut the cords that 
bind us, and part in disgust ? 

A practical moralist is bound to find a remedy for the evils 
he enumerates, or keep silence till he can. We are per- 
haps to reform them, beginning the glorious work in the spirit 
of the Jewish Pharisee by thanking God we are not as other 
men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as these 
publicans. 

Until this reformation is accomplished we must go on 
together with all the accompaniments of viciousness and 
crime. But the slave country is to be a slave country for 
the present generation. What abolitionist dreams of earlier 
universal freedom ? 

Prayer meetings may be held by the faithful. Women, 
and men like women may meet in secret conclave and preach 
about it. Little children may lose their gingerbread and give 
their cents to purchase tracts. Foreign renegadoes, whom 
fanaticism sends to us and folly encourages, may agitate the 
community with inflammatory exhortations and specious dis- 
course. The gifted and fair, whom the misplaced hospitality 
of an abused people flatters into a brief notoriety, may join 
their factitious consequence to the throng, and even the splen- 
dor of great talents, the reputation of great piety and the in- 
fluence of a great name may bring all the resources it pos- 
sesses to remove Slavery from the land, but the day of de- 



liverance will not dawn upon us till all who now hold slaves 
and all who reproach them for it, and the slaves themselves 
who are the present living objects of pity and love, shall be 
together alike the " unsubstantial images of air." 

In my judgment the time will be protracted by these gen- 
eral accusations. If they are true the effect of them is to 
produce obduracy in error and resentment for indignity ; to 
sustain a man in his vices by all motives of self-respect, and 
rouse his hatred to the officious intruder who dares, with words 
of charity on his hps, to violate the rights of personal respon- 
sibility and assume the offices of inquisitor and judge. But 
general accusations are never true. The national character, 
real or imputed, is felt to attach to every individual whether 
he himself be or be not a partaker of the national vice. Yet 
as many men in the worst districts of a civilized community 
are free from the iniquity which is ascribed to the whole, gen- 
eral accusation becomes personal injustice, and injustice in 
the guise of morality unites upon itself the odium which the 
world vents upon arrogance and hypocricy. 

Besides the extreme ofFensiveness of national reflections, 
there is a passage of such point and particularity that scarcely 
a husband or father in the slave country can fail to consider it 
a personal affi-ont. 

" Early licentiousness is fruitful of crime in mature life. How far the obli- 
gation to conjugal fidelity, the sacredness of domestic ties, will be revered 
amid such habits, such temptations, such facilities to vice, as are involved in 
slavery, needs no exposition. So terrible is the connexion of crimes ! They, 
who invade the domestic rights of others, suffer in their own homes. The 
household of the slave may be broken up arbitrarily by the master ; but he 
finds his revenge, if revenge he asks, in the blight which the master's unfiiith- 
fulness sheds over his own domestic joys. A slave-country reeks with licen- 
tiousness. It is tamted with a deadlier pestilence than the plague." 

It is among the most fruitful and pathetic subjects of Dr. 
C.'s complaint that there is nothing sacred in the home of 
the slave ; that the master enters it with impunity and dis- 
solves those ties of conjugal fidelity by which the dearest 
2 



10 

relations of life are maintained. If it be so, it is a grievous 
offence, and sorrow and shame be on the nefarious agent in 
that scene of depravity. 

But it would seem that the negro's hut is not the only one 
that may be exposed to the licentiousness not indeed of lust 
but of slander. 

In the passage above quoted the charge is so general that 
no one may consider himself exempted. It is not made 
against the obscure, the low, the ignorant, the vulgar. It at- 
taches to whatever in that country is deemed to be noble, ele- 
gant, refined, dignified or accomplished. It is the slave's 
master — the planter's family — the home of the opulent — the 
educated, the distinguished ; the bed of the chivalrous, the 
high-minded, the eminent in the council or the field that is 
said to be desecrated by unfaithfulness. Their wives and 
daughters by their own impurity satiate the slave's revenge for 
the ignominy which in the common course of events taints his 
domestic joys ! ! 

A writer, so proverbially accurate as our author, can claim 
no indulgence for the ardor of composition. Thus the pas- 
sage reads without discrimination, or exception for age, rank, 
station, or sex. 

It is not necessary to multiply extracts, to impress on the 
reader the force of the remark, that such statements, addressed 
to our own people, are calculated to produce an excitement 
more extravagant and uncontrolable than has yet appeared ; 
and addressed to the slave-holders, have the inevitable ten- 
dency to call up an angry state of mind, wholly inimical to 
any useful results. On their part, they will complain, not of 
injury, but of insult. They will not be satisfied with the lim- 
itations here and there interspersed, in the course of our au- 
thor's remarks, because the evils of Slavery, as he describes 
them, are treated as inseparable from its existence, and attach, 
in a great degree, to all slave-holders. The sin is on them 
all. The wrong, the injustice, the oppression is practised by 
all ; and the retaliation and revenge, " by the terrible connex- 



11 

ion of crimes," falls upon all. The indignation, which it 
called up in the North by this mode of discussion, is and must 
be directed to all. We know the fiery character of the slave- 
holders. Dr. C describes it strongly: 

" A quick resentment of whatever is thought to encroach on personal dig- 
nity — vehemence of the vindictive passions — and contempt of all laws, hu- 
man and divine, in retaliating injury ; these take rank among the virtues of 
men, whose self-estimation has been fed by the possession of absolute power." 

With such views of their temperament, it is surprising he 
should deem his mode of attack calculated to accomplish the 
professed object of his book. It is pouring oil on a confla- 
gration. 



CHAPTER II. 

Poicer over Slavery. 



The continuance or removal of Slavery is solely within the 
power of the domestic legislation of the States in which it 
exists. 

On this point, I do not find that our author differs from the 
common sentiment of his fellow-citizens ; though, indeed I 
could have wished to see the political duty of the Northern 
States a little more distinctly affirmed. He does, however, 
declare that the question, " how Slavery shall be removed, is 
a question for the slave-holder, and one which he alone can 
fully answer;" and that, " we have no right of interference, 
nor do we desire it." 

Upon this, I remark that there is in the book a singular 
discrepancy between the means and the end, and a direct 
assumption of the right which is disclaimed. 

The means proposed are moral influences. To have any 
efTect, they must find their way into the mind and heart of the 
slave-holder. The end, which we call abolition, the slave- 
holders consider a request to give up, waste, annihilate, what 



12 



they estimate to be worth to them about five hundred millions 
of dollars. 

The moral influence, which is to work this stupendous mir- 
acle in their hearts, is first to commence by persuading them 
that they are guilty of atrocious crime ; then it is to make 
them penitent for their deep transgressions, — and as peni- 
tence is nothing without reformation, they are to be induced 
to part with this accumulation of ill-gotten wealth, and surren- 
der it at the instigation of an authorized minister of the gospel 
of peace ! ! 

Surely, the first step in this gigantic enterprise, should be 
to conciliate the confidence and esteem of the patients, upon 
whom it is to be essayed. A prudent and skilful necroman- 
cer, before he could expect to charm them out of their for- 
tunes, would endeavor to win his way to their hearts. Peter 
the hermit, when he preached a crusade, dealt out his prom- 
ises as liberally as his threats, and assured his devoted hear- 
ers that, although they might die in Palestine, they should 
live in Heaven. Some politic priests, who have the credit, 
in modern times, of being extremely successful in obtaining 
property for pious uses, have opened the strong box with the 
key of love, — or, if the terrors of the confessional have in- 
duced some miserable penitent to plate sin with gold, it was 
when the extravagance of his fears had swallowed up his judg- 
ment. 

The attempt, in the present case, is one which, in no age 
of the church, would have been made by authority. 

An Unitarian clergyman goes on a desperate enterprise, 
when he attempts to awe men or frighten them into a compli- 
ance with his will. He may deride, if he pleases, the arro- 
gance of the slave-holder, and describe it as the consequence 
of power habitually maintained over one or two hundred de- 
pendents ; but what will the slave-holder say, in return, of 
that temper of mind which ventures to intimidate five millions 
of freemen, by menace, denunciation, and indignity. 

If, indeed, we mean to fight the slaves free, it is of no mo- 



13 

ment how angry we make their masters ; but if wc really in- 
tend to use moral means and the powers of persuasion, it is 
extremely unfortunate that we give them strong reason to be- 
lieve we are not sincere. 

3. It is a breach of our highest political contract, and a 
violation of good faith and common honesty, to disturb the in- 
ternal condition and domestic arrangements of the slave-hold- 
ing States. 

I assume this position to be self-evident. At any rate, I 
do not address myself to those who deny it. 

The first open question is, does this book and its doctrines 
interfere with the internal condition and domestic arrangements 
of the slave-holding States ? 

First, I say, they are intended to do it. Slavery is estab- 
lished by law ; and the object of this publication is to abolish 
it. If, in the opinion of our author, his book will not, and 
cannot disturb the existing relations of Slavery, it was a work 
of gratuitous folly to publish it. 

Second. The press is the only power that can be used to 
disturb the domestic arrangements of Slavery. It is not im- 
agined that any law in Massachusetts can operate in Carolina, 
or that we are to move with an army to put down our white 
fellow-citizens. No other interference is possible but the 
interference of the press ; and he who uses it in a manner to 
produce a dissolution of the relations of Slavery, does what 
he can and all he can to produce that disturbance which honor, 
truth, and conscience bind us not to excite. 

Is it said this book is not, by its manner, calculated 
to produce disturbance among slaves ? Let us examine it. 
Think you, if Dr. C banning was to go into the slave country, 
and, gathering round him a hundred negroes, preach the doc- 
trines to them which he has published to us, it would be likely 
to produce disturbance ? Or, what is the same thing, if he 
should send his book to some free negro, who should mount 
a stump, and read it to his race, would it produce disturbance .'' 
Is it a book that any slave-owner would permit to be published 
on his plantation ? Is the existence of the book good cause 



14 

of alarm to him, and an inducement to greater care that it 
should not be circulated ? Nobody can doubt upon these 
points. 

The only remaining inquiry is, will the doctrines of this 
book reach the ears of the slaves ? 

Whether they do or not, Dr. C. is equally culpable, by his 
own system of morals. For, by printing the book, he has 
done what he can to give it to the world. 

But it will get to its destination. Sooner or later its doc- 
trines will reach the slave. The world is one great whisper- 
ing-gallery, whose faintest echos are reverberated by the press. 
Slowly but surely, whatever it publishes moves through in- 
ferior agents and reaches all ears deeply concerned in its re- 
lations. 

Now inquire what is the doctrine which the writer advances. 
Upon this, I have a word to say to him as a logician. He 
does not follow out his own premises. He disavows the con- 
clusions, directly, plainly, irresistibly deduced from his own 
positions, and appears to me to be oppressed with the horror, 
which no human being can escape from, who looks with stead- 
iness and constancy on the immense moral evil, which, in the 
character of a Christian moralist, his doctrine is bringing on 
the country. 

I charge him — in spite of his disclaimer — with the doc- 
trine of Insurrection. Pie inculcates the right of insurrec- 
tion on the whole slave population of the United States. It 
is immaterial that he contradicts himself. It is in vain that he 
abjures this act in absolute terms. If the necessary and fair 
and only proper deduction of his argument is insurrection ; 
if all sound reasoning from his declared principles leads to 
it ; if all rational men must so understand it ; if the stupidest 
slave would so receive it ; if it requires false logic and soph- 
istry to escape from it ; — then it is insurrection that he 
preaches ; and for its horrors, when they come, and for their 
evils, in anticipation, he is answerable, to the extent of his 
exertion, at the tribunal of public opinion and the bar of God- 

This is a grave charge ; but it is easily demonstrated. 



15 

The whole doctrine of his book is, that man, under no pos- 
sible circumstances, can be rightfully made a slave. On the 
twenty-ninth page, the position that has before been repeated 
in every form and with every variety of illustration, is summed 
up in the following forcible and impressive words : 

" We have thus seen that a human being cannot rightfully be held and used 
as property. No legislation, not that of all countries or worlds, could make 
him so. Let this be laid down, as a first, fundamental truth. Let us hold it 
fast, as a most sacred, precious truth. Let us hold it fast against all customs, 
all laws, all rank, wealth, and power. Let it be armed with the whole author- 
ity of the civilized and Christian world." 

The negroes in the Southern States are made slaves by 
acts of legislation and the coercive power which is exercised 
under those acts. If these acts were repealed, every slave 
would be as free as Dr. Channing. But if these acts of leg- 
islation are already made void by a power superior to all hu- 
man constitutions and governments, if they cannot accom- 
plish what they propose to accomplish, they have done noth- 
ing ; they no more operate upon the negro within their juris- 
diction, than upon the white man beyond it. There is, then, 
no legal Slavery, and can be none. The force, therefore, 
that restrains the slave, is oppression, injustice, tyranny, des- 
potism ; and if, against all this, a man may not rightfully rebel, 
if, when he is thus unjustly made a slave for life, and his wife 
and children are made slaves with him, he may not rise, in his 
strength or his madness, and shake off his chains, and stand 
guiltless before God, with the blood of his oppressor on his 
hands, it is in vain to talk about human rights. 

It is absurd to tell of wrongg without remedy. For every 
human wrong there is a remedy ; by law, when the law pro- 
vides one, and by resistance, when under the color of law, 
instead of a remedy we find only a wrong. 

Could we doubt a moment about this, if the law of Carohna 
should propose to detain every white traveller passing through 
its territory, and turn him on the plantation as a slave .'' In 
such case, the law would be no more invalid and unjust than 
Dr. C. represents the laws about negro slaves. But is there 



16 



a heart in New England that would not beat high with sympa- 
thy for the abused white man ? Is there an arm that would 
not reach him a dagger, if it could ? Is there a tribunal on 
earth, or any law of Heaven, that would not excuse — excuse, 
did 1 say ? — that would not command him to watch for his 
opportunity, and make himself free ? 

If a human being is made a slave under color of a law 
which is nothing but the law of force, which is against right, 
justice, and the will of God, which gives no title and can con- 
vey no property in his person, which is criminal and void in 
its conception and its continuance, all moral and Christian 
doctrine, all sound reasoning, and that spirit of humanity which 
makes man superior to a brute, give him the right of resist- 
ance and tell him to use it. 

But, says Dr. C. — alarmed unquestionably at the dan- 
gerous precipice to which he was tending — "government, 
indeed, has ordained Slavery, and to government the individ- 
ual is in no case to offer resistance." 

Such a sentiment is fit only for a slave. It is the doctrine 
of passive obedience and non-resistance which was scouted 
from all human creeds, with the same breath that blew away 
the divine right of kings and the dogmatical pretensions of the 
clergy. 

Government is to be resisted by the sacred right of revolu- 
tion and the inherent and original right of rebellion, in those 
extreme and dreadful emergencies which carry with them their 
own justification. If government, when without right and 
against moral principle and Christian duty, it subjects two mil- 
lions of human beings to abject Slavery, whom God made 
free and intends, in his holy will, should continue to be free — 
if government may not, in such case, be resisted by them, all 
our sentiments of freedom are wrong — all reverence for our 
own revolution is folly — all respect for the liberty we enjoy 
is no more than idle pretension and senseless extravagance. 

Does our learned theologian expect to shield himself from 
animadversion by the use of the term "individual".^ It 
would be a quibble unworthy his character. An individual 



17 

citizen, in an organized government, appeals for redress to 
the law. But in the occurrence of such an unsupposable 
case as that he should be doomed to death or slavery, without 
trial or justice, his right of resistance revives, which under 
common circumstances is suspended. It may be useless to 
him, but not the less perfect. 

But the slaves are not to be treated as a case of a single, 
solitary individual. There are more than two millions of 
them, and nearly as many as the number of American citizens 
in 1776. There are three times the number of the whole 
population of Massachusetts ; and if any government, foreign 
or domestic, was to doom the free-born and gallant sons of 
our Commonwealth to Slavery, and there was one of them that 
should tell you that government must not in such case be re- 
sisted, he would be fit for the Slavery to which he was des- 
tined, aye, truly to be the slave of slaves. 

One cannot but be struck with the opposition between the 
course of our author and the Bible, from which he professes 
to draw his artillery, as explained by Dr. Wayland, whose 
most practical and able elements of moral science he quotes, 
with deserved approbation. 

If the Bible, says Dr. W., had forbidden the evil of Slave- 
ry instead of subverting the principle, if it had proclaimed 
the unlawfulness of Slavery and taught slaves to resist the op- 
pression of their masters, it would instantly have arrayed the 
two parties in deadly hostility throughout the civihzed world. 

Dr. Channing is not contented with subverting the princi- 
ple. He assumes to forbid the sin. 

He undertakes to forbid the evil of Slavery, and thereby 
teaches the right of resistance, and as a consequence, does 
what he can to array that deadly hostility which the wiser 
teachings of the gospel were intended to prevent. 

It would be astonishing that, with his intellectual acuteness, 
he should have disregarded this plain distinction between his 
own course and his master's, but that we know the power of 
enthusiasm, Hke Slavery, "to blind its supporters to the 
plainest truth." 
3 



18 

The argument of Dr. C. is as unsound in its logic as it is 
refined, extravagant and dangerous in its morality and horrible 
in its consequences. 

His fallacy is one very common to enthusiasts. He as- 
sumes a proposition to be universally true which is true only 
with important qualifications and many limitations. 

His conclusion is based on the premises that no property 
can be made to exist in a human being. 

This is but partially true even in Massachusetts. We ad- 
mit a limited property in human beings. A father has a prop- 
erty in his child ; a master in his apprentice ; a ship-captain 
in his mariners ; a general in his soldiers. Their labor be- 
longs to him, and their services, like those of the slave, may 
be enforced even by stripes. 

Property is the creature of municipal law. It exists no- 
where without law ; and everywhere is inherent in everything 
which is made property by law. 

Such law may be unwise, impolitic and cruel, but still it has 
its effect. 

Where is the authority for the declaration that there can be 
no property in a human being ? In the Bible ? Slavery is 
recognized under the Mosaic and christian dispensation with- 
out censure In History ? Slavery has existed in all time 
in the fairest regions of the earth and among the most civilized 
portions of mankind. Our own government not long since 
made a claim on Great Britain for the value of the property 
of our citizens in some hundred human slaves. The princi- 
ple was admitted by the English nation. The amount to be 
paid was referred to the arbitration of the Emperor of Russia. 
Our claim was allowed, the money received, and distributed 
to the claimants for their loss of their property in slaves. 

We acknowledge the existence of such property whenever 
we seize and return a runaway slave on the application of his 
master ; and our Supreme Court, refering to the period when 
Slavery was recognized here by law, have in numerous in- 
stances adjudicated important rights on the doctrine that 
where slavery does exist or has existed by the law of the 



19 



land, such law did admit and must be now deemed to admit 
the existence of property in human beings. 

If it be true now that no law can make man a slave, it was 
true always. Discovery of truth does not make truth. It 
was as true in the days of Pharaoh that the earth moved round 
the Sun as it is now, ahhough nobody knew it. 

If we are to adjudicate to-day on a law of the last century, 
and now for the first time discover that what was taken 
for truth was not truth, we must now declare it. If no human 
power could make a slave, no human power has a right to 
say that any man is, or that any man has been a slave. But 
the doctrine of Dr. C. applied to civil rights has been over- 
ruled by the first statesmen and jurists of the country, and I 
venture to say never will be received with any favor by prac- 
tical men. 

If it is not from scripture or history, legislation or jurispru- 
dence that Dr. C. derives authority for his argument, whence 
does it come ? From a refined and elaborate metaphysical 
subtilty wholly incomprehensible to a great part of mankind — 
from new light in the recesses of his study, from some double 
distillation which by a novel process of alchemy he has been 
able to effect on the dry bones of ancient morahty. 

But while he has thus in his own estimation converted 
dross into gold, while he comes forward as the discoverer of 
a new elixir of life for the mortal and decaying principles of 
mankind, while he proposes to effect by it an entire revolution 
in the manners, sentiments and feehngs of the civilized world, 
it would have been kind in him rather to have spoken in the 
style of pity than of censure, and instead of accusing the slave- 
holder of his sins and his crimes, have been lenient to past 
transgressors on the recollection of their ignorance. 

New discoveries in moral science like the nostrums of the 
quack win their way slowly into the favor of mankind. We 
are apt to be jealous of that inventor who assumes to be wiser 
than past ages, or better than the present. We subject his 
experiment to a careful analysis ; we revise his process with 
coolness ; and when we detect the error of his theory and the 
danger of his practice, we only add another to the list of those 



20 

delusions with which a man more easily deceives himself than 
the world. 

Dr. C " takes it for granted that no reader would be so 
wanting in moral discrimination and moral feeling, as to urge 
that men may rightfully be seized and held as property be- 
cause various governments have so ordained." 

This is begging the question. The conformity of human 
law to the supposed will of God is one thing, the operation 
of actual existing law is another. Property is the result 
of human legislation, and not of divine command, and whether 
men or beasts are or are not property, may or may not be prop- 
erty, can or cannot be used, treated, held, sold or bartered as 
property, is a question solely referable to the law of the land. 

This idea of going behind and beyond the law to find a 
a rule for human action in civil society is getting to be some- 
what alarming 

One man thinks the law of marriage is a monopoly and should 
be abolished ; another thinks a distillery is an abomination 
in the eye of Heaven and that its owner is out of the protec- 
tion of mankind. Some men believe that there ought to be a 
community of goods, by a plain indication of Providence, and 
some who do not care much about Providence, join in the 
denunciation of the laws. Some men think that the transpor- 
tation of the Sunday mail is a great violation of holy time, and 
if they had their way would lay a weekly embargo on the post 
office. Some men think that the law which punishes a felon 
with death involves the whole country in the guilt of murder. 
Indeed there is no end to the vagaries of the human intellect. 
If we once go beyond the law to ascertain in what property or 
rights consist, we put every thing in society on the wild ocean 
of uncertainty. The law is the expression of public wis- 
dom. When in public judgment it is wrong it will be changed. 
Arguments may very properly be urged to prove that it ought 
to be changed, but none can be tolerated in society to show 
that while it is allowed to stand it is inoperative and void. 

Dr. C. probably means to say that the law which makes 
property of a slave is inconsistent with the law of God. In 



21 

deciding this question the Doctor is not to be sole judge. 
It is a question about which other men quite as eminent have 
the same right of opinion. Its true solution is to be ascer- 
tained by the condition and circumstances of the case. 

As a general proposition this is declared to be false by the 
universal past legislation of the world, and by no men more 
emphatically than by our own eminent civihans and jurists. 

If our Supreme Court could be asked the question whether 
human law could convey any right of property against the 
principles of sound morality, religion and the will of God, I 
have no doubt they would by an unanimous opinion decide 
that it could not. If they had to adjudicate on the question 
whether the law of Massachusetts before the constitution of 
1780 did make property of a slave, they would as readily de- 
cide that it did. They have done so again and again. 



CHAPTER III. 

Right of Discussion. 



There are those among us who are ready to exclaim — 
What are consequences to us ? Are we not free men .'* May 
we not publish the truth .'' Have we not the right of free dis- 
cussion, as one of the elements of public liberty } 

1 admit, in its fullest and broadest latitude, the legal right 
of free discussion ; but I insist that this, like all other human 
rights, is to be controlled by a high moral responsibility. 

While the legal right may be admitted, in its fullest and 
most perfect existence, the expediency of the exercise of such 
a right is a matter of the most grave consideration. All that 
is legally right is not expedient ; and whatever is clearly and 
palpably inexpedient, ceases for the time to be morally right. 

It would be a shameful abuse of political liberty to do, at 
all times and under all circumstances, everything that is not 
prohibited by public law. The commands of honor, of con- 



22 

science and of duty, are as strong in a republic as in a des- 
potism. They can be safely relaxed nowhere. In the one 
case, they are enforced by the commands of the monarch ; in 
the other, they are referred to the protection of the people ; 
and in either case, if their dictates are violated, there is the 
same necessary and unavoidable consequence — the demoral- 
ization of the public character. 

Under the administration of a free government there is the 
stronger obligation for personal restraint, because it is to the 
personal, and not the public power, that the good order of 
society is mainly entrusted. 

If the statute-book contained no law against arson, it would 
not follow that a midnight incendiary might wrap his neigh- 
bor's dweUing-house in flames. But the statute, necessary as 
it now is, may be safely repealed whenever society arrives at 
that state of perfection in which the moral principle will be 
strong enough to afford general protection. 

If there is no law of the land that prohibits the free discus- 
sion of the most dangerous and exciting subjects of public in- 
quiry ; if the necessary freedom of popular government does 
not permit the arm of the law to stop the pen or the press, it 
is on the presumption — which, like other fictions of law, is 
sometimes strangely at variance with fact — that there is a 
moral and prudential principle, quite as operative and effica- 
cious for the protection of society. It is on the presumption 
that they who have the power to move the mass of the com- 
munity, will have the discretion to do it wisely ; that they, 
who by their education, talents, and learning, "preaching to 
stones would make them moveable," will take care that they 
do not remove the foundation stones upon which the temple 
of national liberty is erected. 

When, therefore, we admit the perfect right of free discus- 
sion as uncontrolled and uncontrollable in our government of 
laws, we do it with the obvious qualification, that whatever of 
evil tendency the government does not restrain by force, indi- 
viduals will restrain by inclination ; and that whenever there 
is a breach of the great law of general security, by inflamma- 
tory and dangerous discussions, the inefiiciency of the govern- 



23 

ment will be more than supplied by the reprobation of the 
people. 

There is a growing tendency to disregard this broad axiom, 
without which a democracy could not subsist. There is an 
increasing disposition to use to its extreme the liberty of the 
constitution, to forget that republican government is self-gov- 
ernment, and that self-government devolves on the citizen an 
obligation to do that for himself which the peace and good 
order of the State requires, and which, elsewhere, he is com- 
pelled to do by the irritating interference of public authority. 

I know very well that Dr. Channing disclaims " agitation" 
and all "indiscriminate and inflammatory vituperation of the 
slave-holder." But how much better than such vituperation 
are the highly-colored and exciting pictures of sin, ruin, dis- 
grace, which this modern Angelo brings upon his canvass, in 
the freshness of instinctive life. How much more excusable 
are his strong appeals to duty and pride of character, and the 
lofty spirit of our people, which ring like the war-trumpet on 
the field of battle, to stir up the passions of mankind. But, 
are they true ? Suppose they are. How much is this a rea- 
son for quietness and peace. How much is the artist, whose 
splendid and costly engravings were lately burned by order of 
a court of justice, excusable because every delineation of his 
pencil was most exactly faithful to nature. Truth, like nature, 
may not always be exhibited without the excitement of feel- 
ings, appetites and passions, that a wise and practical philos- 
opher would deem it dangerous to move. 

If a discussion of Slavery, in its actual state and condition 
in our country, excites in the people of the free States, indig- 
nation, resentment and pity ; if it produces in New England 
horror, abhorrence and contempt, it must lead to action, in 
which these convulsions of the mind will pour out its concen- 
trated fires, or it will compel us to brood, in sullen mahgnity 
and silence, over the compressed passions that policy stifles 
in the heart. We must be open enemies or false and deceit- 
ful friends. If no action is proposed, and no safe action can 
possibly be devised for us, there is no alternative but sullen- 
ness and hatred. The bonds of our political union may re- 



24 

main indeed undivorced ; but we have prepared for ourselves 
a condition of connubial wretchedness, to which their actual 
dissolution would be infinitely preferable. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Tlie Doctrine of Slave-holding States. 

Public sentiment in the slave-holding States cannot be al- 
tered. 

This arises from a very melancholy consideration, but one 
which should be deeply considered. 

Domestic Slavery is, in the United States, so intimately 
connected with civil society, that it can never be removed 
but by one of those tremendous convulsions in which nations 
perish. 

I speak not merely of the destruction of popular govern- 
ment, of the overturn of our democracy and the substitution 
of another. I say nothing of the dissolution of the Union and 
the establishment of several feeble and independent States. 
I speak not of civil war and its concomitants of butchery, 
massacre, and blood. Far less do I limit the statement to the 
waste of property, the desolation and ruin, the wretchedness 
and poverty of houseless and helpless fugitives from their once 
comfortable homes. I speak not of the deluge of crime that 
would sweep like another flood over all the moral monuments 
of the country ; but of Chaos come again, in the utter anni- 
hilation of all the elements of which our social, civil, religious 
and political institutions are created. 

I speak to sensible men who see this danger, and to con- 
scientious men who tremble at it. I speak to firm men, who 
will not think it a mark of courage to brave its horrors, or of 
intrepidity to conceal them. I speak to practical, experienced 
business men, who know, by actual contact, the force of hu- 
man motives and the rage of human passion, and not to 



25 



theoretical and secluded scholars, who would give lessons in 
their study for the measure of a whirlwind. I speak to the bold 
and venturous navigator on the great ocean of life, who has 
heard the roar of the elements and felt the strain of the cord- 
age ; and not to the little pilot of a pleasure-boat, who never 
ventures beyond the ripple of a summer's breeze. 

I utter the declaration with grief; but the pain of the wri- 
ter does not diminish the truth of the fact. I speak it to men 
whose generous and noble spirits would shrink from no sacri- 
fice that would alter the fact, whose blood would be poured 
out like water if it could wash this record from existence, but 
who know and feel that it is the record of immutable truth, 
over which no human power can prevail ; and I give utter- 
ance to it now, because every effort to remove the condition 
of domestic Slavery in the United States tends to produce a 
catastrophy, first to be written in the blood of purity and inno- 
cence, and then effaced by the ashes of everything valuable in 
the land. 

Why this should be so cannot be explained. Possibly as 
a balance in the operations of Heaven, for the the unparalleled 
blessings of our extensive and prosperous republic ; possibly 
as a trial for those virtues, which need calamity as well as 
happiness ; possibly as the mode by which our nation, like 
the mouldering empires of the elder world, shall come to its 
termination ; possibly for some mysterious reasons yet to be 
developed in the wisdom of Providence ; possibly for some 
cause, like the minor evils of life, never to be made manifest 
to human reason. 

We are concerned with the fact more than with its cause. 

Is it true that Domestic Slavery is the perpetual and im- 
moveable condition of our national existence ? 

Let us examine very summarily actual facts. Slavery is 
now firmly estabhshed in fourteen States and Territories of 
the Union and in the District of Columbia, the centre and 
common property of the whole. This slave District is the 
fairest and most fertile portion of the United States. It is the 
most progressive in population, the most extensive in terri- 
4 



26 

tory, and of course most likely to advance in influence and 
political power in the government of the country. Without 
adopting in their full force all Dr. C.'s disparaging reflections 
on the character of white men within a slave district, it is ob- 
vious that the circumstances under which they are placed are 
not very favorable to the operation of nice speculative morali- 
ty when it comes in opposition to direct personal interest. 
The population, already five millions, will double and quad- 
ruple in a short time by force of its natural productiveness 
and by new immigration. The natives born grow up accus- 
tomed to the state of things around them. The immigrants 
go there acquainted with the laws and customs of the country, 
which they prefer to those of the adjacent free States. They 
go to better their worldly affairs, and not as promulgators of a 
new faith or reformers of existing principles. Slavery is es- 
tablished by law in this vast territory and always has been 
from its first settlement by Europeans. This law does not 
indeed change its proper character, but it is the indication of 
the sentiment of the people as to that character, and speaks 
the popular opinion of the country. By force of that law a 
slave is property and may be owned, bought and sold as any 
other article of merchandize. His time and labor are his 
owner's, and the profits of his labor belong to his master. 
He is of course productive property. However abhorrent 
all this may sound in our ears, we must hear it and give it 
weight. We are dealing now not with theories but with 
facts. We are not discussing abstract rights, but actual re- 
alities ; not what ought to be but what is. Slaves then 
are in fact property. They are the wealth and fortune of 
the planters. We know how intimately property enters into all 
the relations of life, especially any kind of property which has 
been long understood and possessed, and has the peculiarities 
of being fixed or moveable at the will of the owner. In the 
division of estates property in slaves is considered a part of 
the inheritance as much as bank stock ; and it may happen 
that while one heir takes the money of his ancestor, others 
divide the land and the slaves at their estimated value. As 



27 



property, debts are contracted on a pledge of slaves and 
slaves are disposed of to pay the debts of their master. 
Here are the obvious direct operations of the property charac- 
ter of the slave population. Like articles of merchandize 
elsewhere, like leather, flour, sugar, cotton, coffee, ships, 
cloths, paper, or whatever is used among us for property 
and with which the industry and enterprise of our citizens is 
concerned, this species of property is in the slave district the 
indirect means of a great proportion of all the activity and 
industry which is there visible in the accumulation of profit. 
It is an item indeed in the aggregation of capital which is 
not here particularly the subject of barter, the item, namely, 
of disposable human labor. It resembles the value which is 
represented with us by the labor of oxen or horses which we 
know to be, though immensely less in amount, yet actually of 
very considerable consideration in the estimate of our New 
England wealth. 

I have already adverted to the amount of capital vested in 
slaves by those who diflering from Dr. Channing consider a 
slave as their property. It is of little moment whether we take 
the Southern estimate as correct, and consider the slaves of 
the United States as equivalent in worth to five hundred mil- 
lions of dollars, or deducting one half, estimate them at two 
hundred and fifty millions of dollars, the smaller sum is of 
such enormous magnitude that it will answer the purposes of 
illustration as well as the larger.* 

The professed owners of this property are of every grade 
and class of society in point of wealth, integrity and reputa- 
tion, from the affluent planter with his thousand negroes, to the 
day laborer who owns a single boy perhaps to diminish his 
mechanical drudgery ; from the statesman of high intelligence, 
and the clergyman of acknowledged probity, whose domestic 
establishments are served by their bondsmen and bonds- 
women, to the keeper of the gambling house or the bagnio, 
to whose deeds of infamy these servile subjects lend their en- 

* Since this was written I have seen an estimate hy which the value of slaves in the 
United States is estimated to be more than eight hundred millions of dollars. 



28 



forced assistance. It is doubtful whelbcr in the free States 
there is any one article of property which enters so exten- 
sively and minutely into all the ramifications of society. Our 
society is more divided into portions and detachments, hav- 
ing a general connexion to be sure, but not that intimate and 
close union which binds the inhabitants to the common inter- 
ests of slavery. When our woollen interest was threatened, 
the manufacturers of cotton thought they could get along 
pretty well. When our navigation interest was in danger, 
the commerce of the country most closely allied to it did not 
feel the apprehension of immediate dissolution. If at this 
moment any one or two of our most productive occupations 
were closed by a war or a tariff that should ruin them, the 
rest might go on with only their proporiional share in the 
common calamity. But Slavery wherever it exists is the 
sensorium of the country. It is the one nerve which runs 
through the whole political body and connects every part of 
it with the seat of life. 

Before Slavery can cease in the United States this vast 
property must be annihilated. It must be surrendered by 
consent of its owners or wrested from them by force of 
war. 

An overwhelming and well appointed army not less numer- 
ous than Napoleon led into Russia, might in process of time 
overrun the country and making desolation call it peace. 
Such an army would give the abolitionist some reason to hope 
that Slavery might be destroyed. He might expect in the 
lust of conquest to find the slave and his master in one com- 
mon grave. Force can do any thing. But to expect that 
the Southern slave holders will voluntarily relinquish their 
possession and title to the property which they claim in their 
slaves, is a stretcn of credulity that has as yet no parallel in 
the history of human delusion. 

Of the tenacity with which mankind cling to the possession 
of property, we are not to judge by estimating its intrinsic 
title to their regard, but by practice, experience and a knowl- 
edge of human wants, passions and desires. He is a poor 



29 



teacher who in estimating the operation of motives and the 
causes of action takes mankind as he would have them and 
not as they are. He is a false guide in any expedition for the 
benefit of society, who takes the road he should prefer with- 
out first ascertaining if it be practicable. 

Two hundred and fifty millions of dollars must be sacri- 
ficed by about four millions of people. Let us examine this 
matter by bringing it home to ourselves. Taking round num- 
bers it would be equivalent to a tax of four millions five hun- 
dred thousand dollars on the City of Boston, or upwards of 
thirty-six millions of dollars for the State, and more than one 
hundred millions of dollars for the six New England States. 

I have all reasonable faith in the generosity, the spirit and 
the nobleness of my fellow-citizens, but if it were asked of 
them to take this immense amount and pour it as a votive gift 
into the ocean, or gather it and burn it on their lofty hills as 
a beacon fire in honor of freedom and to relieve the Southern 
slaves from their intolerable bondage, who ventures to believe 
he would live long enough to see the consummation of so 
much moral glory ? Or suppose it was to be asked of us to pay 
only our proportionate share of a general assessment on the 
United States for the indemnity of the slave holders, would 
the City of Boston be willing to contribute its amount of one 
million and three quarters, or the State its quota of seventeen 
millions and a half ? 

If here then, where there is such an abhorrence of slavery, 
where there is so much high principle, where so many think 
it morally wrong, there would be found some difficulty in ob- 
taining a contribution large enough to purchase ease to our 
own consciences, by relieving the country of this awful in- 
iquity, what may be expected in the slave districts, where 
there is no such feeling, and of whose freemen we ask not to 
contribute merely, but to take upon themselves the whole 
load — to reduce themselves to want — their families to beg- 
gary and their country to ruin. 

But the loss of the slave as property, immense as it is, 



30 



forms a small part of the injury which the Abolitionist pro- 
poses, as that injury is estimated at the South. 

It is the prevalent opinion there that a great part of the 
land is susceptible only of slave cultivation, and that without 
this kind of labor their fine fields would be desolate. What 
the fact may be I am unable to say — perhaps it may be true 
only to a limited extent. It is the opinion and not the fact 
which the Abolitionist must encounter before he can persuade 
the planter to give freedom to his bondsman, but he must sat- 
isfy the Northern people not of the opinion but of the fact, and 
assure them that their cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco will 
come to them as it now does, or he may find some little re- 
sistance here to his glorious scheme of universal liberty. It 
will be a poor argument in the way of traffic to persuade the 
Northern freemen to contribute their millions to redeem the 
country from the sin of slavery, to tell them that the property 
they have preserved will not command the accustomed con- 
veniences of life. Whether this labor could be done by free- 
men, and would, if there w-ere no slaves, be done to any con- 
siderable extent by freemen, is a problem we may never be 
called upon practically to settle, nor is it of moment that we 
should. There are some conditions in life that no state or 
circumstance can make more deplorable, if it does not cause 
actual corporeal pain ; and a man, whose lot it may be to work 
in a rice swamp, or toil in a cotton field, to whom nothing 
but that unvarying drudgery is appointed by Providence, 
without hope or possibilty of change, may thank Heaven that 
in its mercy it ordained him not to be free. 

These are some of the difficulties in the way of abolition 
and by what motives are they to be overcome ? Dr. Chan- 
ning proposes to mek the iron chain of the slave by the soft 
breath of peace ; he expects to dissolve his fetters by the 
charm of words. 

He tells the slave owner that he cannot have property in a 
human being — that to hold him as property is "to inflict a 
great wrong, to incur the guilt of oppression" ; " that man has 
received sacred, inalienable rights, which are violated by 



31 



slavery." That slavery is a mighty evil, and he proceeds to 
argue out these positions with all the learning of the schools. 

If he spoke with the voice of an Archangel' and carried 
conviction to every planter in the whole region of slavery, it 
is hard to believe that such conviction would have any effect. 
Human nature must he improved and sublimated vastly be- 
yond its present standard before such arguments on such a 
subject would have any practical effect. 

But the whole of this reasoning will fall on deaf ears and 
marble hearts. It will not be credited for a moment. Edu- 
cation, custom, habits, all the forms of society, all the modes 
and manners of life combine to raise an atmosphere that will 
not transmit the sound. The law of the land refutes it. The 
teachings of the reverend, the learned, the eminent among 
them confound it. The immortal leader of the armies of 
freedom was a slave holder. The draftsman of the Declara- 
tion of Independence was a slave holder. The eminent pat- 
riot to whom more than to any living man we owe the consti- 
tution of the United States is a slave holder, and their exam- 
ple will in the land of their nativity outweigh all the eloquence 
and all the learning of a whole colony of mere talking clergy- 
men. 

The slave region has pronounced its decision. Within its 
borders Slavery shall not be discussed. The people do not 
mean by any affectation of liberality to endanger their social 
system. They believe it is right, but they mean to maintain 
it wrong or right. Upon this subject they ask no instruction 
and they permit none. They have taken their stand. They 
refute all argument by silencing it, and to all force they are 
prepared for resistance. 

In this condition of things all hope of exterminating Slavery 
is desperate by any other means than open determined pro- 
fessed hostility ; by an active, vigorous and destructive civil 
war. 



52 

CHAPTER V. 

Modes of MolisJiing Slavery Considered. 

The difficulty already stated might appal ordinary minds, 
but there is nothing too arduous for the efforts of fanaticism ; 
nothing too quixotic for the knight erranty of religious re- 
formers. 

Let us then look at the case in another point of view. 
The masters of slaves, it is admitted, are not at present in a 
temper of mind to give them liberty and the slaves them- 
selves are not in a condition to receive it. What are the 
means of abolition. 

"I onZj/ ask" — says Dr. C. — "that the slave holding 
States should resolve conscientiously and in good faith to re- 
move this greatest of moral evils and wrongs, and would bring 
immediatelij to the work all their intelligence, virtue and 
power." 

The extreme simplicity of this modest request shews the 
value of the proposal for all practical purposes. It is only 
that the whole population of the slave district should change 
its habits, manners, feelings, tastes, inclinations, principles, 
objects, wants and wishes. It is only that while they think 
themselves in perfect health they should believe this physician 
of souls that they are gangrened at the heart. It only that 
for the purpose of curing a disease of which they are not sen- 
sible, they should submit not merely a spouting artery to be 
tied up by this skilful surgeon, but as if there were any hope 
of life in the experiment, make bare the whole vascular sys- 
tem to be dissected from the quivering trunk. 

This little operation seems not even to our author to be 
quite definite enough in its plan, and the matter is therefore 
pursued further into detail. 

" The Church should rest not day or niglit till this stain be wiped away.'" 

Mathias professed to be a prophet. The elect Lady claim- 
ed to work miracles. The Mormonitcs have some pretence 



33 

to supernatural power, but none of them ever ventured on a 
greater extravagance than this. In a contest with Slavery the 
Church itself would be destroyed, so far at least as its influence 
in other respects would be concerned. But the Church is 
first to be persuaded. The Church at the South is composed 
of slave-holders. Its priests and its levites are slave-holders. 
Its temples are erected, its altars are maintained, its offerings 
are purchased with the labor of slaves. 

But says Dr. C. "Government should devote itself to 
this, as its great object. Legislatures should meet to free the 
slave." 

This is, indeed, somewhat alarming. 

Force, power, authority are to interfere, and what cannot 
be accomplished by argument, is to be made successful by 
the arm of the law. Religious reformers have, in all ages, 
been persecutors. They have depended on reason and logic 
when they have had no better means of persuasion ; and re- 
sorted to penalties, fines, imprisonment, the scaffold and the 
stake, whenever the power to do so has come into their hands. 
Mahometan and Christian are in this alike. All sects of 
Christianity have stained their fair fame by similar iniquity ; 
and while we supposed that a better system and a purer faith 
now prevailed in the world, and that the fires of Smithfield 
had been extinguished forever, the head of the liberal clergy, 
in the advance of the nineteenth century, proposes to change 
the whole domestic arrangements of the greater part of a con- 
tinent, and to demolish what many millions of people deem to 
be their right of property, by the power of government and 
the aid of legislatures ! ! The moral reformer, who suggests 
this mode of attaining his object, abandons his own cause. 

But government and legislatures, in our day, are not what 
they once were. Government and legislatures are but an- 
other name for the people. In the slave country slave-hold- 
ers make them ; and they, who are thus created, are slave- 
holders themselves. To call on government to put down 
Slavery, shews rather a disposition to use power than a knowl- 
edge of its character. It is more absurd than to call on the 
5 



34 



Pope and his Cardinals to abolish snpei'stition ; and of about 
as much value as the vote which enrolled the Emperor Alex- 
ander among the members of the Peace Society of Massa- 
chusetts. 

There is yet another day-dream of the learned Doctor, 
which would amuse us by its extreme childishness, if the 
honest simplicity in which it is made, did not redeem it from 
ridicule. 

" Were the colored population [of the slave States] to be assembled in 
Sunday schools, and were the whites to become their teachers, a new and 
interesting relation would be formed between the races, and an influence be 
exerted which would do much to ensure the gift of freedom." 

There is certainly no gainsaying this proposition. The 
overseer might teach them their catechism. The field-driver, 
somewhat accustomed to the task of instruction, might give 
them lessons in the alphabet ; and the masters, when they 
were further advanced, might impress upon their minds Dr. 
Channing's homilies on the theory of property, and prove that 
all claim to it in a hum.an being is altogether false and ground- 
less. 

Were this to be done ! Oh time most reasonably to be 
expected, under the joint operation of " preaching," "gov- 
ernment," and "legislatures." 

I came very near having a present to-day, said a boy to 
his mother. How so, my dear ? Why, I asked a man to 
give me his dog, and he said no ; if he had only said yes, I 
should have brought him home. 

But there are solemn considerations connected with this 
subject. The present inability of the slave population to re- 
ceive freedom is admitted in the book before us ; and the 
impossibility that the life of the slave should be long enough 
for him to acquire the necessary knowledge, is a proposition 
quite as demonstrable. That a few negroes may be made 
free without essential evil, is no exception to this truth. The 
question to be met and settled is, what would be the result of 
an entire change in the whole relations of society ; and anx- 



35 



iously as I could wish it were otherwise, deeply and sincerely 
as I deplore the awful and tremendous evil with which the 
country is visited, strongly, as a freeman and a Christian, I 
would implore that the liberty and the light of the one and the 
other might be safely shed upon the heart of every bonds- 
man in the Union, I do yet as solemnly and sincerely be- 
lieve that abolition, and even the prospect of it, would bring 
desolation upon the white man and death to the slave. 

With all our author's modes and appliances to boot, it 
hardly seems that he contemplates a substantial freedom to 
the slaves. He puts them like a boy on his coasting-sled, but 
seems to dread the velocity of their motion, and to try vainly 
to stop them in their way. 

It is rather a transfer of masters than a freedom from all 
ownership, that is proposed. It is not, after all, that the slave 
is not to be considered as property, but that he is not to be 
the property of the present claimants. Thus it is said : 

" It may be asked whether, in calling the slave-holding States to abolish 
property in the slave, I intend that he should be immediately set free from all 
his present restraints. By no means. Nothing is further from my thoughts. 
The slave cannot rightfully and should not be owned by the individual. But, 
like every other citizen, he belongs to the community ; he is subject to *he 
community, and the community has a right and is bound to continue all such 
restraints as its own safety, as the well-being of the slave demand. It would 
be cruelty, not kindness, to the latter, to give him a freedom which he is un- 
prepared to understand or enjoy." 

1 confess I do not understand this nice distinction. I am 
sure the slave would not comprehend it Whether he is 
under one man or all men, he is a slave still. How he 
can cease to be property and yet belong to the commu- 
nity I do not perceive. Between Slavery and freedom 
there is no middle ground. To change masters merely 
is a mockery, which the most degraded and ignorant would 
feel to be an insult as cruel as bondage. If the negro is 
not a citizen, he is a slave still, call him by what name you 
please. If he is a citizen and debarred the rights of a citi- 
zen, the title is a deception, and the deception is a fraud. 



36 

Slavery is an evil. The slave feels it to be so. But in 
what does he think the evil consists ? In its physical, not its 
moral deprivations. Of these, the majority know nothing, 
and no more feel the want of them than do the brute animals 
with whom they labor. 

The freedom that they seek is relaxation from toil, from 
restraint, from industry. The liberty they desire is the 
liberty of sensual indulgences — to eat, drink, dance, sing 
and sleep, in idleness and ease. We see this in the free ne- 
groes who have once been slaves. It is the peculiarity of 
their character. They do indeed work, because freedom 
alone will not support them ; but they work no more than to 
keep soul and body together, or to get the means of gratifying 
their appetites for pleasure ; and through the whole slave 
country they are careless, thoughtless, improvident, idle, and 
most generally vicious, vile, indigent and miserable. 

It was for no high moral objects that the insurrection it St. 
Domingo was excited. It is for no moral improvement tliat 
the liberated slaves of that garden of the West Indies have 
made it comparatively a desert. It is for no high and hon- 
orable objects that the English slaves enjoy their emancipation. 

I hold in as high estimation as Dr. C. the grandeur of 
our common nature. I know as well as he does its aspiring 
and heaven-directed character. Slavery is not its natural condi- 
tion. It can be kept there by nothing but oppressive, heavy 
immoveable physical force. Relax the cords and they will 
be broken. Loosen the bars and the imprisoned victim 
escapes. He escapes as a ferocious wild beast from the toils 
of the hunter. He flies as a half tamed savage on his enemy. 
He springs with all the violence of excited passion, with all 
the madness of insatiate vengeance, with the fury of stern, 
malignant, deep seated and ferocious revenge upon all that 
now are deemed his foes. 

The keeper of the INIenagaric who has taken from their 
native forests the lordly Lion and the reasoning Elephant, 
keeps them in subjection by his iron bars and chain of steel, 
and fearlessly with the whip in one hand puts the other into 



37 

their mouths, or lays himself between their feet. Let him 
give them the prospect of Uberty. Let him take them upon 
the common and tie them by a thread to the great tree and 
see then if he can practice his gambols with impunity. 

The security of the master and the slave can exist only by 
superiority of power. 

The change to be wrought in the heart of the slave to 
make him a tame and safe freemen is not less in amount and 
kind than is to be produced in the heart of the white man, to 
persuade him into the generosity of giving away his property 
and beggaring himself. 

The slave thinks he has been injured, long, deeply, wan- 
tonly injured, and the very restoration of his freedom as his 
right is an acknowledgment of the fact. Is it to be believed 
he. will not seek his revenge ^ 

Nothing but the want of power now restrains him. Has 
he remembrance of the stripes of his vassalage .'' Does he 
recollect that his naked limbs have been examined in the mar- 
ket of human flesh? Does he " see the scar of the lash on 
the back of his wife ? Does he feel that his home has been de- 
secrated, that the tenderest relations, intended by God equally 
for all, and intended to be the chief springs of happiness and 
virtue have been sported with wantonly and cruelly .^" And 
will not a deep and deadly revenge be the first, strongest and 
most constant sentiment of his heart. The slave has been 
too deeply injured to be a safe citizen. 

It may be said with truth that one wrong is no excuse for 
another. But we are addressing motives to the slave-holder 
to liberate his slaves, and he tells you what nobody doubts, 
that the moment he gives them the opportunity they will cut 
his throat. He may setde the moral account as he can with 
his conscience, but it is the extremity of folly to suppose 
that with such an apprehension he will ever make the ex- 
periment. 

There has been no insurrection among the slaves in which, 
however temporary their power, it has not been exerted with 
dreadful cruelty and acts horrible to humanity. To implant 



38 

better principles is a pious but a very hopeless task. For 
eighteen hundred years the world has enjoyed the light of 
Christianity, and yet we are daily witnesses of its feebleness 
to restrain the excesses of human passion. How many gen- 
erations of slaves are to pass away in moral discipline before 
the descendants of the present are to be competent to free- 
dom ? 



CHAPTER VI. 

Moral Duties. 



If the object is impracticable, which our author proposes, 
the book is useless. If Slavery be the law of our national ex- 
istence it is idle to urge its abolition. But we are pressed 
with a strong moral obligation. 

We are bound it is said to use every virtuous influence for 
the abolition of slavery. " We are bound to encourage a 
manly religious discussion of it." 

I wholly deny this proposition. I see no obligation to 
interfere with the domestic laws of the South in regard to 
Slavery any more than with the internal aflairs of any private 
domicil in the country. We have not made those laws and 
we cannot repeal them. If there are slaves there they do not 
belong to us. We cannot give them freedom. If Slavery be 
a great sin it does not lie upon our consciences. There 
are other sins which it would be well to remove. There 
are sins at home quite enough to give occupation to all our 
thoughts, energies and prayers. Why not first purify our- 
selves. Why not shake off that narrow contracted bigotry 
which deifys ourselves, and which may be seen even among 
some of the most liberal religionists ? Why not endeavor to 
get rid of that priestly tendency to domination which is not 
confined to the Vatican ? 

Arc wc to preach uj) a general crusade against sin ? We 
may find a world of labor on our hands, and much that is quite 



39 



as horrible and quite as immoveable as domestic Slavery. 
I am at a loss to ascertain why this sin of other people, in 
which we have no agency, bears so heavily on our hearts, un- 
less, like the mother of Cuddie Headrig, in Old Mortality, we 
are ready to exclaim — " With this auld and brief breath will I 
testify against the backshdings, defections, defalcations, and 
declinings of the land, against the grievances and the causes 
of wrath " ! 

But it seems to me, if we are bound to talk so much, we 
may be obliged to do something. We must do what we can 
to give efficacy to our preaching. We must not ease our 
consciences altogether at the expense of other people. We 
must be willing to share the loss which will fall on our 
dear friends at the South, when they take our gratuitous 
advice and give liberty to their slaves. Are we ready to 
do this .'' 

We must refuse, certainly, to share the gains of these man- 
destroyers and oppressors of human rights. If they have 
stolen the labor of the African, we may not be receivers of 
the spoil. We must taste none of the sugar, eat none of the 
rice, wear none of the cotton, purchase at no price any other 
article which is the product of slave labor. When the Rev- 
erend teacher has acted on his own principles, and proves to 
us that in this respect he keeps himself unspotted from the sin 
of Slavery, he may have some better right to read us the lec- 
ture, which, as one having authority, he has so assumingly 
bestowed upon us. 

I hold this duty of abstinence to be the imperative duty of 
the moral abolitionist. He who sees the tears of the slave on 
his cotton, or finds his blood in his sugar, should as religiously 
abstain from the one and the other as a Jew from pork or a 
Mussulman from wine. 

If this little personal sacrifice is somewhat startling, if we 
are not quite ready to stop the mills at Lowell at the com- 
mand of this fanciful morality, or close half the commerce of 
the world in devotion to our new faith, it behooves us to look 



40 

a little to the probability of its enforcement if we press very 
hard "this religious discussion." 

It is impossible that the slaves can be easy under the agita- 
tion of the question. They know it, feel it, and will act upon 
it. A continuance of this discussion Will cause insurrection, 
whether such object be intended or not. 

I will not enumerate th^^^slBHS for this assertion. They 
have been elsewhere presented, and are.xsbvious enough. 

The press and the pen shed their influence everywhere. 
Fanatics are hardy enough to go into the slave country ; and 
their very deaths by a mob convey knowledge to the slave. 

The discussion of Slavery, in the manner and with the prin- 
ciples of our author, will, I venture to affirm, set those ma- 
terials on fire, which in their own nature are almost inflam- 
mable enough to blaze by spontaneous combustion. 

Now look at the consequences here, as well as in the slave 
country. Would the cause of morality be promoted by the 
crimes of insurrection and a servile war .'' 

Are the sufferings of the slaves, in which we are invited to 
feel so much sympathy, comparable to what would be endured 
by our own laboring poor, if, for a single year the Southern 
crop should fail for want of cultivation ? 

If the slaves must toil with wholesome and reasonable la- 
bor, or our own people must starve, though they double their 
exertions, which alternative does a wise and sound morality 
direct us to choose ? 

This sensibility for the negro may be well enough when it 
can be indulged without injury to our own flesh and blood ; 
but it is the poor and sickly offspring of a diseased mind, 
when it passes over the deeper and nearer sufferings of our 
friends with comparative indifference. 

Such a false sympathy is, however, the constant indication 
of the book before us. 

Dr. Channing tells a tale intended to raise this pity. 

" I once passed a colored woman at work on a plantation, who wag singing 
apparently with animation, and whose general manners would have led me 
to set her down as the happiest of the gang. I said to her, " Your work seems 



41 

pleasant to you." She replied, "No, Massa." Supposing that she referred 
to something particularly disagreeable in her immediate occupation, I said to 
her, "Tell me, then, what part part of your work is most pleasant." She 
answered, with much emphasis, "JVo part pleasant. We forced to do it." 
These few words let me into the heart of the slave. I saw under its apparent 
lightness a human heart." 

And if the woman had ^gg^a^kgn jj^ouyierjrang, and put 
down safely in Stat^treet, andSere'*told' she was free, 
would she not be e^Uy forced to work } Would she not 
be surrounded by a busy and active population, moving through 
daily toil and labor by the same force } '■'■ Forced to do if' ! 
How many of our own people are glad of the opportunity of 
being forced to labor. 

Possibly it may be found that the description of the abo- 
litionists which our author has drawn, is the picture of his own 
book. He has " fallen into the common error of enthusiasts, 
that of exaggerating their object, of feeling as if no evil ex- 
isted but that which they opposed, and as if no guilt could be 
compared with that of countenancing and upholding it." 

The view which I take of the moral duty of an American 
citizen, in regard to the discussion of Slavery, is to leave it 
to the regulation of those in whose territories it exists. 

I feel that our Constitution was a compromise, in which we 
agreed that each State should in its own domestic affairs be 
sovereign and independent ; and that it is the highest infrac- 
tion of all moral principle to violate the obligations which our 
contract imposes on us. I cannot reconcile it to my con- 
science, while I daily and hourly enjoy the blessings of this 
republican government, to take back any part of the price that 
was paid for it. 

In all codes of morality honesty holds the first place, and I 
deem it dishonest, as it is dishonorable, to do that by indirect 
means which 1 am prohibited from doing openly and avowedly 
before the world. If insurrection breaks out among the 
slaves — if war and its atrocities are the consequence — if 
that mass of human beings are induced to act out the princi- 
ples of abolition, and seize by force the rights and liberties 
which they are told by a preacher of the gospel are their's, in 
6 



42 

spite of all law of man's device — if because they are images 
of God, and may not be made slaves, — arguing from our au- 
thor's principles, and feeling they are men they use men's wea- 
pons to repossess themselves of their birthright, no drop of 
the vast torrent of blood that is to flow shall be laid to my ac- 
count. If it be wrong to have made them slaves or to hold 
them so, i^ mttkfWitKtttttilitiKtttt they who imposed upon 
them the mark of degradation arc H|||^ answerable for a 
condition of things which at present no human eye sees the 
manner of preventing, I shall feel no need of an angel's tear 
to blot from the Chancery of Heaven any share of mine or 
my New England countrymen in the reckoning of the great 
day of account ; but I would not be an accessory to insurrec- 
tion by aiding or abetting it, or counciling it by any word of 
encouragement that even against my wishes might probably 
tend to produce it, for any earthly consideration. I have the 
same charity for the slave-holdei's. They did not originate 
this state of things. They cannot change it. No law of 
Heaven demands an impossibility at their hands. 

I say nothing of the political duty of a citizen of Massachu- 
setts to abstain from conduct which is dangerous to the peace 
of our fellew-citizens at the South, because men whose con- 
science obliges them to carry on a moral war think nothing of 
political duty. But I concur most unhesitatingly in the opinion 
which has been publicly advanced by distinguished jurists 
among us, and is a very general opinion among the profession 
of the law, that any measures obviously tending to produce in- 
surrection are equally a violation of political duty as those that 
are intended to excite it. Men are legally answerable for the 
natural consequences of their actions. A government would 
be absurdly defective in power which could not prevent the 
infraction of its peace, and as absurdly ignorant not to know 
that other governments require it to prevent its citizens from 
intermeddling in their internal affairs. Neither do I say any 
thing of the cruelty to the negro, bond or free, which these 
publications cause under the guise of humanity. This topic 
has been also well enforced. We see it practically in our 
own colored population. Their character is wasting under 



43 

the operation of a too sublimated morality which they cannot 
comprehend. We shall make worthless vagabonds of hitherto 
harmless and orderly citizens 



, CHAPTER VII. 

What is to be done 9 



If Slavery is an evil, the generous and enterprising spirit 
of our countrymen does not incline them to sit down and 
tamely submit to it. What is to be done ? I answer nothing. 
It is not desirable that domestic Slavery should cease in the 
United States. 

On this point I must borrow a favorite expression of Dr. 
C. and " beg that I may not be misunderstood." 

It is not desirable that domestic Slavery should cease, 
because by the laws of our nature and according to all the 
calculations we can make, it could not be terminated in any 
way that would not produce vastly more aggravated and ex- 
tensive evils than are suffered by its continuance. 

It is the fault or the folly of the abohtionist that he will not 
look on things as they are. He surveys them through the 
misty medium of a false and deceptive sensibihty, which mag- 
nifies and distorts them and conceals others vastly more 
alarming. 

A practical statesman is bound to survey the condition of 
actual existence and all the relations of the subject he pro- 
poses to change. A practical moralist would not be justified 
in expunging one crime by the admission of twenty. White 
men as well as negroes are to be taken into the account, and 
the general happiness of all is the subject of discussion. 

If Slavery did not exist in the country, the question of in- 
troducing it would be setted by acclamation. No sohtary 
voice would call it into being. If, like Columbus we now 
stood upon the borders of a virgin world, and had what his 
great genius could not command, power to direct by whom it 



44 



should be settled, or if over any part of it, like one of the em- 
inent men of New England, we had been favored by Provi- 
dence with the right to say who should occupy its borders, all 
would join him in the recorded mandate of the Ordinance for 
settling the North Western Territory — our soil shall never be 
polluted by Slavery. We have no such power. Slavery exists. 
There are more than two millions of slaves among us. What 
can be done ? 

To keep them in Slavery is an evil, but not the unmiti- 
gated evil which it is represented by the overstrained sensi- 
bility of enthusiasts. Heaven in its mercy never permits such 
unalloyed evil to exist. The slaves as a class are better fed, 
better clad, less worked, and have less care and anxiety about 
their condition, than a great proportion of the hard working 
day-laborers in freedom. As they are deemed to be property 
there is no inducement to treat them inhumanly. If the work 
which they perform is to be performed by anybody, it is not 
probable that it could be done with less physical suffering than 
it is by the slaves. Our humanity need not be pained on 
this account.* 

Still the evils of Slavery are very great. What would be 
the evils of abolition. 

First the war, bloodshed and crime, by which it is to be se- 
cured. 

No man, w^io retains his common sense, whatever his 
wishes may be, can for a moment believe that the slaves of 
the United States will ever become free by the consent of 
their masters. When the crisis arrives it is to be accom- 
plished in blood. I will not enlarge on this topic. It is too 
painful. He who can for a moment contemplate the white 
men and white women of our Southern States in the hands 
of their negroes, ignorant, frantic, lustful and ferocious, and 

* It is doubtful if a cliild was ever in the slave country compelled to cat its own fasces, 
as was proved in Pike's case at Saiera ; or was subjected to tlie punishment of being tied 
under its arms and suspended in tlie vault of a necessary, as was proved in tlie case of a 
child often years old, in this city, some years since. The case of Washburn vs. Knight, 
tried in o\ir Supreme Court, was unequalled for a series of cruelties which were proved, to- 
the absolute liorror of the jury. A man who would not Iiarni a horse because he is his 
property, will sometimes delight in torturing a fellow-being, in whose existence lie has no 
pecuniary interest. There are tyrants everywhere. 



45 

feel any satisfaction that by these means their Hberty is to be 
secured to them, must have very strange notions of Christian 
morahty. 

If, however, by some supernatural operation — which is too 
fanciful to be made the subject of speculation — the owners 
would consent to give them up, and by a hke miracle they 
could acquire the means of understanding the value of free- 
dom, there are yet other evils of vastly more amount than the 
present evils of Slavery. 

Suppose them to emerge from Slavery, intelligent, moral 
and industrious, with all the capacity and inclinations of the 
white man. 

They would be negroes still. Two distinct classes of men 
could not live upon terms of equality in the same country and 
under the same government. The more their intelhgence, 
the greater would be the mutual hostility of the two races ; and 
the final possession of power would be the result of a war of 
extermination, in which one or the other race would perish. 

Is it supposed they could amalgamate ? God forbid ! This 
is a matter of sentiment and taste, to be sure, upon which the 
feelings are to be umpires. There are those who see nothing 
disgusting in such an idea. But I fearlessly aver that if this 
be the tendency and the result of our moral reformation, rather 
than our white Saxon race should degenerate into a tribe of 
tawney-colored Quadroons, rather than that our fair and beau- 
• teous females should give birth to the thick-lipped, woolly- 
headed children of African fathers, rather than the nice and 
delicate character of the American woman, which in its fresh- 
ness and its pride is at once the cause and the consequence 
of civilization, should be debased and degraded by such indis- 
criminate and beastly connexion, rather than the negro should 
be seated in the halls of Congress and his sooty complexion 
glare upon us from the bench of justice, rather than he should 
mingle with us in the familiar intercourse of domestic life and 
taint the atmosphere of our homes and firesides, — I will 

BRAVE MY SHARE OP ALL THE RESPONSIBILITY OF KEEP- 
ING HIM IN Slavery. 



46 



CHAPTER Vlir. 

Abolition Meclings and Illegal Mobs. 

Dr. Channing reproves the abolitionists, and reprobates 
mobs. In these respects his book conforms to public senti- 
ment. The conduct of the abolitionists is bad, and that of 
mobs worse ; but how one or the other can be the appropri- 
ate subject of his animadversion is not easily perceived. 

A man who adopts his doctrine may be expected to act 
upon it. A very little infusion of zeal would make such an 
one a fanatic. If he preserved his reason to enable him to 
act consistently, and beheved his immortal welfare depended 
on reforming other people's sins^ he could hardly be blamed 
for any extravagance of action. The abolitionist, if he is 
sincere, must be extravagant. The blame rests on those who 
inculcate the principle, rather than on the disciple who re- 
ceives it. 

Hence it is that in the book the reproof is very moderate, 
and mingled with much praise. Indeed it is received in 
kindness by its objects. Their leading Journal, certainly 
edited with much talent and ability, has proclaimed Dr. Chan- 
ning to be the prince of abolitionists. 

In respect to mobs, they are well represented as the 
usurpers of the people's rights, and the impersonation of 
despotism. It would be well if the sentiment expressed re- 
cently in the face of one of them by a worthy Alderman of 
our City could be adopted by our whole community, over 
my dead body, — said he, — shall they only be able to tri- 
umph over the laws. 

Still to a practical moralist the question returns, whether 
he who does that which will excite a mob, is not in some de- 
gree guilty of its excesses. 

Suppose he only exercises his abstract right. If he knows 
before hand the probable consequences of his action, how 
much of the blame attaches to himself ^ Because he may 



47 

strike a spark with his own flint and steel, shall he be permitted 
to do so over a cask of gunpowder ? 

It is said if he does right and the mob wrong, the blame is 
theirs and not his. I agree that they are blameable and pun- 
ishable, but is he also, under these circumstances, free from 
censure ? 

If we take human nature as we find it, we are sure that men, 
physically free, will resent what they deem insult and injus- 
tice ; and, when they know the law will not redress the sup- 
posed wrong, that they will take the remedy into their own 
hands. 

He, therefore, who advertises an abolition meeting, if he 
has reasonable ground to believe it will produce a disturbance 
of the public peace, has an account to settle with his con- 
science, should such disturbance follow. 

If meat — says the apostle — maketh my brother to offend, 
I will eat no meat while the world lasteth. 

Upon principles of estabhshed law I have some doubt in 
regard to the legality of meetings which are known before- 
hand to be the cause of a mob. A man was recently sub- 
jected to punishment by common law (which is our law) for 
exhibiting ludicrous pictures in his shop window, whereby a 
crowd was collected that obstructed the streets. There was 
nothing improper in the pictures, and they were placed in the 
man's own shop. But day after day people collected around 
them, and all business in the neighborhood was prevented. 
Good sense, says the Court, requires that he shall not so use 
his own right, that by the common operation of human mo- 
tives the peace of the community will necessarily be dis- 
turbed.* 

It has long been law that a mountebank who collects a 
crowd in the streets in front of his place of exhibition, to the 
disturbance of the neighborhood, is a nuisance ; and what is 
an abohtion meeting but a neic kind of Harlequinade, in 

* Carlisle's case, tried in the King's Bench, 1st December, 1834. 6th vol. Carrington 
and Payne, 636. 



48 

which people are invited lo see how the ocean might be bailed 
dry with a clam-shell ? 

These mobs will cease when such spectacles cease. All 
good citizens will discountenance them under all circumstances 
and at all times. But if the tide of popular feeling bursts its 
barriers and sweeps over the laws, the blame attaches to those 
whose moon-sick fancies raise these unmanageable floods. 

Reformers often despise all considerations which interpose 
between them and their objects. They are carried away by 
an enthusiasm, which disregards the elements ; and though 
sometimes on great occasions their zeal may be the cause of 
success, it more generally makes shipwreck of their enter- 
prise. It would be better to let discretion be their tutor. 
Prudence, if it be a homely virtue, is always a safe one. 

Nullum numen abest 
Si sit Prudentia tecum. 

I have no doubt Dr. Channing thinks his book will do the 
State some service. In exposing its errors I think the same. 

The freedom with which I have done this is not inconsist- 
ent with a high respect for his talents and his character. It is 
demanded by a higher regard to the tranquillity of the coun- 
try, the preservation of the Union and the cause of Truth. 



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